Cell phone “bill shock” nearly eradicated, FCC declares

A year ago, the country’s major cellular carriers agreed to new rules requiring them to alert consumers before they exceed usage limits and incur costly overage fees. The Federal Communications Commission announced today the carriers have met their initial requirements.

That doesn’t mean the plan is fully implemented, but it is close. All ten participating carriers (including the big four, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) have met the requirement to alert users before they hit data caps.

But not all have yet complied with rules to send out alerts before limits on voice, texting, and international roaming are reached. Under the program, the carriers must send out alerts in all of those scenarios by April 17, 2013. To hit the deadline that passed today, the companies only had to meet two of the four requirements (data, text, voice, and international roaming).

Verizon is the only one of the big four to have alerts set up for voice and text usage, but Verizon has not done so for international roaming yet. (UPDATE: Verizon points out to us that it does meet the international roaming requirement for data in all countries, and for voice and text in all countries except Canada.) Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T do have international roaming alerts set up already, but not for voice and text.

Alerts are commonly sent via text message or e-mail. Verizon, for example, sends out alerts when a user hits 50 percent, 75 percent, 90 percent, and 100 percent of their data allowances. The FCC promises “more than 97 percent of wireless customers across the country will be protected from bill shock when this plan is fully implemented.”

59 Reader Comments

Frankly, I am pleasantly surprised that any of them have done more than the bare minimum to meet the deadline.

Edit: In fact, looking further at the chart in the linked article 7 out of the top 10 carriers (and 3 of the big 4) have either met all of the requirements for the 2013 deadline or have only one left to do. So yeah...I am surprised.

It might be helpful of the article to mention that neither AT&T nor T-Mob are required to provide alerts for text because:

LinkedArticle wrote:

Carrier does not offer the service or offers it only on an unlimited basis on all domestic plans offered as of or after October 17, 2011, making the sending of usage alerts unnecessary

My current project has a "business" team embedded to help with specs. The business people are pretty non-technical. This alert saved my co-worker big money; she got it 3 days into her new month shortly after upgrading to iOS 6 and suddenly having her PhotoStream backing up to iCloud over the network. She has 2GB a month and had already used 1.5GB of it. Apparently she takes a lot of photos.

I set the backup feature to only do it over wi-fi, but she would have no doubt pushed her bill up by several hundred dollars had she not gotten than alert.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

A question for the author, perhaps: can the carriers make the alerts opt out, or allow customers to set their own thresholds? Did the FCC disallow that? It would be a pro-consumer move, in a way, but I can easily imagine the FCC saying no to it. Those same people, those complaining about the messages, would then kick up a ruckus when overages occurred. "How could you let this happen to me?"

Of course, there's ways to get around it. Twice we've been hit with 'overages' with Verizon despite not actually going over. See, if you upgrade a phone, or resign a contract or modify it, they'll stop your monthly billing and prorate it to that date.

Two years ago, we went and added a phone (LG Cosmos) to our family plan for our eldest. It was September 1st, and we were about to go to Dragoncon, and needed to keep in touch with her, plus she was just going to High School, and was in the marching band. Anyway, our plan has it's reset day on the 5th, and free weekends and nights. we had 50 minutes of our plan left (700) and felt that would last us the remaining 48 hours until the free calls kicked in. No, they took our 700 minutes, divided it by 31 and then multiplied it by 26 (588 minutes) as that was the pro-rated limit for then. So at ~650 we were suddenly over by 62. Neither my phone, or my wife's changed, we just added another line.

We were not happy.

Took me three hours of dressing down a number of people at Verizon, after a GOOD 24 hours researching facts with the FTC and FCC but they dropped the overage charges. However, last I checked, this was still 'legal'. Keep an eye on your bills. I think they gave in because it's easier to do so than risk having the practice ruled illegal/improper.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

A question for the author, perhaps: can the carriers make the alerts opt out, or allow customers to set their own thresholds? Did the FCC disallow that? It would be a pro-consumer move, in a way, but I can easily imagine the FCC saying no to it. Those same people, those complaining about the messages, would then kick up a ruckus when overages occurred. "How could you let this happen to me?"

I'm a Verizon customer, just checked. You can change the thresholds or opt out on a page where you can manage alerts.

I don't think the FCC disallowed opting out. I assume they must not have, since Verizon lets you do it.

VZW has had this for a while I think... I started with them somewhere about a year ago and remembered setting up these notices.. Only come close to hitting the data if i try to stream radio for a day because the building I work in is terrible for it...

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

Its annoying. But not annoying enough to call CS.

i once argued with a woman for an hour over why she could not opt out of the USF fees on her bill (a whole .20) because she didnt want her money going to government socialism. You would be amazed at some of the trivial things people call in about.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

A question for the author, perhaps: can the carriers make the alerts opt out, or allow customers to set their own thresholds? Did the FCC disallow that? It would be a pro-consumer move, in a way, but I can easily imagine the FCC saying no to it. Those same people, those complaining about the messages, would then kick up a ruckus when overages occurred. "How could you let this happen to me?"

I don't think that's a good idea at all. It'd be too easy for the flag to be triggered and bill shock to be right back. The issue this is preventing has been a major source of financial hardship on a lot of folks for a long time now. Sure, a cell phone is a "luxury" but when you have a contract with such huge penalties for overages, it is incumbent upon the provider to notify you in a timely manner. At least, that's the reasoning behind these alerts.

Honestly, I hope everyone complains about these. It'll go some way to costing the cell providers enough money for phone time with a CSR that they may consider unlimited services as a norm.

I'm a Verizon customer, just checked. You can change the thresholds or opt out on a page where you can manage alerts.

I don't think the FCC disallowed opting out. I assume they must not have, since Verizon lets you do it.

Just checked AT&T and they do not have an interface set up yet for this (that I could find) and even a search in their support DB for "disable usage alerts" just returns the the document explaining that they have alerts for data usage. This does not surprise me.

Does it matter anymore? Nowadays, the family shared plans (not-optional on VZW) have unlimited voice and text, so you'll never go over. I seriously overestimated the amount of data my family uses (2/3rds of the way through my billing cycle we're using 2/10GB) so that's not an issue either.

Does it matter anymore? Nowadays, the family shared plans (not-optional on VZW) have unlimited voice and text, so you'll never go over. I seriously overestimated the amount of data my family uses (2/3rds of the way through my billing cycle we're using 2/10GB) so that's not an issue either.

Yes it matters. It would cost me an additional $70 a month to change my current plan over to unlimited while keeping all my existing devices and current data cap.

Does it matter anymore? Nowadays, the family shared plans (not-optional on VZW) have unlimited voice and text, so you'll never go over. I seriously overestimated the amount of data my family uses (2/3rds of the way through my billing cycle we're using 2/10GB) so that's not an issue either.

The data is the part they want to rob people with now, not the voice and text. So mentioning how the unlimited voice&text plans are decently priced while ignoring low cap outrageous data price is purposely ignoring how companies are CURRENTLY trying to abuse their customers.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

People wouldn't complain if your bloody industry could figure out a standard way to deliver this information on, like, a homescreen gauge. They also wouldn't worry so much if the first minute over plan didn't follow an infiniteponential curve, requiring us to, gosh darn, have to overbuy a month ahead of knowing our own usage, every month. Telco's expertise in divorcing cause from expense in the everyday usage, and that way the Shannon limit runs out near the end of each month goes a long way towards shaping an environment of fear with customers. Fear is a great tool for loosening customer purse-strings, though, so the market abides. Every nation America has gone to war with has a better network than us (IOIS* 2010 study), and pays less for it.

*Institute Of Imaginary Statistics, one of the leading braintrusts in seeing an article on Wired about the price of fiber to an outhouse in Korea. I wish I had a 1.2GB/s, symmetric crapper. Even without running water.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

Its annoying. But not annoying enough to call CS.

i once argued with a woman for an hour over why she could not opt out of the USF fees on her bill (a whole .20) because she didnt want her money going to government socialism. You would be amazed at some of the trivial things people call in about.

For the past few years I swear I got a text message every time I have crossed borders into Canada. Maybe it was just for the data rates are now roaming if I use it (but nothing about charging me .69 cents a minute). Thought the last time it warned me of minutes also.

Of course, there's ways to get around it. Twice we've been hit with 'overages' with Verizon despite not actually going over. See, if you upgrade a phone, or resign a contract or modify it, they'll stop your monthly billing and prorate it to that date.

Two years ago, we went and added a phone (LG Cosmos) to our family plan for our eldest. It was September 1st, and we were about to go to Dragoncon, and needed to keep in touch with her, plus she was just going to High School, and was in the marching band. Anyway, our plan has it's reset day on the 5th, and free weekends and nights. we had 50 minutes of our plan left (700) and felt that would last us the remaining 48 hours until the free calls kicked in. No, they took our 700 minutes, divided it by 31 and then multiplied it by 26 (588 minutes) as that was the pro-rated limit for then. So at ~650 we were suddenly over by 62. Neither my phone, or my wife's changed, we just added another line.

We were not happy.

Took me three hours of dressing down a number of people at Verizon, after a GOOD 24 hours researching facts with the FTC and FCC but they dropped the overage charges. However, last I checked, this was still 'legal'. Keep an eye on your bills. I think they gave in because it's easier to do so than risk having the practice ruled illegal/improper.

Did you order the phone yourself or get it in a store? I assume you changed to more than 700 minutes? Since adding a line on the older plans had no effects to the main account, which determines the minutes and pro rating done.

When I sold phones this was one of the first things I would check. The only way to cover it is to first backdate your plan to a higher tier before adding the phone. Sucks but avoidable =/ Ideally as you have said it should not matter and you still had 50 minutes left either way.

Now if you upgraded it yourself you would think there would be a automatic trigger that sends a warning before the order is finalized.

With the new family plans, this is non issue with minutes and text, but could happen to data.

Also, this is how a lot of billing is done (utilities, internet, tv, etc). They just don't have some limit you can go over (well internet in some areas do have caps and charge more for going over.) Communication from telecoms has come a long way but there is a lot of room for improvement. Its sad it takes the the gov't to enforce these over enough customers leaving to cause the company to make changes first. What can you do when you can't/not willing to leave the service with the best coverage but has problems elsewhere.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I'd be complaining if the warning was set at 50% too. That's far too low to be useful, alerts will be going off so often they'll become like car alarms: part of the background noise. That's the antithesis of "alert".

Were it me, I'd set it to send the first alert no earlier than about 75-80% of the allowance, with additional alerts at 90% and 95%. If I were being fancy then in addition to those volume-based alerts I'd also set up alerts based on usage rate, with the alert going off when at the current rate you'll exceed your allowance by more than 20% by the end of the billing period (with some hysteresis so you'd get alerts each time you had a significant uptick but not constantly if your usage remained high).

For the past few years I swear I got a text message every time I have crossed borders into Canada. Maybe it was just for the data rates are now roaming if I use it (but nothing about charging me .69 cents a minute). Thought the last time it warned me of minutes also.

If you happen to spend time near the border you'll get these, too. Sometimes I turn off my phone when I'm on San Juan island.

I work CS for VZW and when the new alerts went into effect last week you would not believe the people calling in to complain about getting a txt msg every time they got to 50%.

I would hear complaints like "i never go over my minutes so why do i need this" or "i don't like text messaging and i don't think i should have to get these" (even though a txt from VZW is free)

I swear some people will complain about anything.............

Its annoying. But not annoying enough to call CS.

i once argued with a woman for an hour over why she could not opt out of the USF fees on her bill (a whole .20) because she didnt want her money going to government socialism. You would be amazed at some of the trivial things people call in about.

My mother has been refusing to pay certain fees on her landline bill for years. The amount is really starting to pile up. For some reason, it was determined that they can't cancel her phone for not paying these particular fees. One day, as the executor, I'm going to have to send AT&T a big check.

Ah so this is why everyone in my family got a 50% usage email from Verizon last week. Not knowing what they heck it was about the other folks on my plan kind of panicked. An email announcing the how/why/when first would have been nice.

After reading some of the comments here about getting lots of messages a part of me worries that the carriers would start bombarding folks with these emails on purpose in order to generating complaints, which they can then use to try to get the FCC to pull this regulation.